I totally agree with you Sades, and I try not to push, myself. Mostly it's a case of the kids seeing the stuff when they come visit, so they want to play with it. And they like them fine while I'm there to show them how stuff works (like you say, engaging with them helped a lot). But when I sent them home with a box of stuff for themselves they didn't have much fun, and couldn't seem to figure out how most of it worked. And it's not like I sent them home with a bunch of ROTF figures or something, I carefully chose stuff that I thought would be easy for kids to catch on to. But I don't think they figured out how to transform much other than a couple Armada toys.

I do wonder sometimes if transforming the figures just requires a certain aptitude for "visualizing" that not everyone has. Or maybe it's that the line is just missing the easy-to-learn entry-level figures like the G1 Minibots, and those small toys were what taught three year old me that aptitude in the first place? I mean, sure, there's Rescue Bots and One-Step stuff, but they're branded separately and most kids over age 5 are going to ask for the "big kid" stuff.

Right now, my one year old seems to be just figuring out that the robots and cars that he sees me playing with are actually the same thing. He'll give me this knowing smile now, like he's thinking "good trick daddy, but I know that's the same toy!" and it's pretty hilarious, especially since it wasn't long ago that he'd get super confused and look around to see where the car went once I'd turned it into a robot. Mostly when he grabs one it's to vroom it around in vehicle mode, though.